


The Romanian Solution

by fluffharpy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Gen, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 13:02:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2694002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffharpy/pseuds/fluffharpy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For three days, he thought he was free. Then the pangs started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Romanian Solution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myrafur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrafur/gifts).



> Myra lent me this plotbunny to foster a bit. Thanks go to her for the inspiration and being willing to share!

 

For three days, he thought he was free. No more handlers. No more doctors. No missions. No orders. It was disorienting. Like standing at the brink of a cliff and staring up into a depthless blue sky.

Then the pangs started.

It was almost a relief.

*** 

Sometime before, another decade: waking was an injury he struggled to shake off. It was the cold. It got inside.

There were voices. There had been since he first brushed up against consciousness. Nervous, vaguely institutional voices. They were familiar to him. Not known, but part of a pattern. A regular feature of these moments, when he struggled out of the sleep.

After some time, he understood what they said.

"…still within parameters though?"

"What parameters? There's no basis for comparison here."

Mumbling. He could not follow all of it. "—precedent—?" was all he could catch.

Louder, "If you can call that a precedent!"

A new voice cut in then, one that oozed a sort of cool political confidence, an ease with command. He found himself paying more attention.

"Hello, boys," it said. He opened his eyes. "What's the hold up?"

The newcomer resembled the voice. Ice blue eyes in an affably indifferent face. Easy posture that demanded attention, made other bodies seem awkward in their deference.

"Ah, he's less responsive than we expected. Behind timeline," said a lab coat. One of the earlier speakers.

"Clearly." A bit of a smile, but no warmth in those eyes. No sympathy for delays. "The relevant information is why, and what we're going to do about it."

"He was active too long last time." The answer came quickly. Too quickly. There was no confidence. "His cells are—they're changing. We're studying the effects already. Photosensitivity. Anemia. Protein deficiency. Inability to produce—"

"Save it for your colleagues, doctor. That's lost on me."

"Er." Not really a reply. His eyes flicked toward it. A worm of disdain penetrated his thoughts.

"The—the Romanian Solution is proving more potent than we expected. It's advancing more than we expected. I would… we think the best answer is transfusion, and strict timelines for returning to cold stasis in the future."

A moment of quiet after that. A warm hand came to rest on his shoulder, just above the seam where it joined his prosthesis.

"How much will this set us back?"

Hesitation turned into no answer. The hand on his shoulder tightened slightly. Only slightly.

"You have eight hours. If he's not ready by then, you'll both be answering for it."

"Yes." The two voices said together. "Yes, of course, we'll just—"

"Just get it done."

There was a commotion after that, but no more conversation. A nurse was brought in. A woman who didn't look at him straight and never spoke. He remembered her movements. Tight. Tense. A fear-driven strength hiding behind her soft face and white uniform. She put a needle in his arm forcefully, but careful. Then she rubbed her hands over her hips—scrubbing them as though she would wipe some dirt on her skirt.

The gesture stood out in his memory.

There was nothing after that.

***

He barely recognized himself.

It wasn't that his appearance had changed so much. The collection of features were similar, arranged in roughly the same configuration. Eyes, slightly down turned. Brows, straight. Mouth, soft, the upper lip stronger than the lower. His hair was longer than it had been when he'd been that man. He had some instinct that he was paler, though he could not say how he knew that from the sepia photographs and grainy black-and-white film footage. Where that impulse came from he could not say. Not a memory. He had no memory of being that person. Perhaps that was why it was so difficult to see himself in the half-smiles and relaxed posture.

There was a moment though, caught on film, where James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes stood beside Captain America as he was greeted by a cheerful young reporter. The woman, her hair in victory curls, effervesced about some latest success. Captain America—Steve Rogers—tipped his head slightly, as though embarrassed by the recognition. The original audio for the film was lost, but he watched Steve's mouth as he said, "I just wish we could have gotten there earlier, ma'am."

And that man who he had been cut a haunted look toward the camera. There was something shadowed in that instant. Something he thought he could see himself reflected in, the way he sometimes caught his reflection in a tinted windshield or dark window.

That was as close as he'd come to a mirror.

***

The pangs.

They started out as discomfort. Negligible. He ignored it. The weight in his limbs. The glare of the sun. The chill that crept into the core of him. He was used to discomfort; being awake was a discomfort.

Then came the nausea. He ate mechanically, because he was aware that it was necessary. Because his handlers had always kept to a strict schedule, and it didn't occur to him yet that he could deviate from those routines. Because it seemed like a human thing to do. Each bite lay heavy in his unwilling stomach.

He drank. Water, mostly. At first, that soothed the burn in his throat. Only at first. By evening of his fourth day uncollected and unaccounted for, it no longer offered any relief.

At 3:43am, he threw up.

He sat at the desk in mustard brown hotel room close enough to the airport to hear the planes descend throughout the night when it struck him. Like a punch. Like a gunshot. The force made him lurch, twisting over the chair's arm while his gut wracked to bring up a dark sludge. Nothing recognizable as food.

It came up thick. Warm. Choking. First a wave, then coughing up more and more by the mouthful.

Even when there was nothing left to bring up, he stayed there, hunched, shaking. Clammy sweat clung to his skin.

That was how they started. They would get worse from there.

***

"Erskine's formula may have died with him, _Herr_ Doctor, but there is always another way. While it would surely gall some of our more dogmatic brothers to turn to the Slavs for a solution to our little setback, there is still some kernel of wisdom in even the most… quaint of superstitions."

He did not know if this was a memory or not.

"I would not call it wisdom, but you are indeed correct that it may provide the resources for a solution of sorts."

That voice.

"It had better, _Herr_ Doctor. It had better."

***

There was a vague sense of betrayal as he collected himself. He had never questioned his body before. Had never had cause to. The sick sense of offended ego that he felt was like the ache from an old wound, recalling an injury that he couldn't remember. There was something uncanny about it, strange and at the same time strangely familiar.

He tried not to think about it. There were towels in the bathroom and a mess to clean.

His hands shook. Another offense.

The thirst was worse. He paused in the bathroom, hand on towel, looking at the tap.

He should drink.

He should, but he found himself reluctant. His chest and abdomen were raw with pain from vomiting. He should drink, but he thought it would happen again.

Why?

He tried not to think of it, but he couldn't abort the thought. Why was this happening? Why was his body doing this to him?

Was he afraid?

He did not like the questions that came to mind. He didn't like that there were questions. There had been too many of those lately.

He took the towel, letting his thirst wait. He would clean up the mess first. He would focus on that first. The other things… he didn't know.

***

"I'm not going to fight you. You're my friend," his target said. Blood came from his brow and the corner of his mouth, thick and red.

"You're my mission," he said. Shouted. His voice was rough. Anger blazed in him. Anger at his target for refusing to act like a target. Anger for having the gall to know him when he knew no one. Anger at the feelings that looking at that face, that those earnest eyes, that determined jaw, stirred up in him.

Always so stubborn.

Anger because anger was easier for him to understand and to act on than a tangled knot of emotions, and for the first time he could remember, that he could really remember, he couldn't feel nothing.

Something predatory stirred in him as he attacked again.

***

Someone was going to come for him eventually. It was the Russians who found him first. Two men and a woman. They found him in another hotel, a new city. This one was navy blue with tiny diamonds of tan and sea green in the thin carpet. They came in during the day, shocking him out of his sleep in a spray of broken glass from the picture window.

One came in that way. One, the woman, came from the bathroom, lunging into the room shoulder first and gun second. The last kicked in the door. All three of them were in black gear that left no skin exposed and dark goggles. Unexpected choice for a daytime assault.

He took it in all at once, all in a jumble as he lurched out of bed. Instinct and conditioning reacted where his sluggish conscience mind could not. Getting him on his feet. Ready to defend. Ready to eliminate the threat.

Window first, fast. Faster than he anticipated. A two punch combo, both jabs. He stopped them, shifting his weight back as he blocked with his left.

The Russian's face, hidden behind reflective lenses and a dense mask, betrayed nothing. Neither surprise, nor aggression.

Another attack. This time, he was ready for it. He caught the knee that came at him and redirected its momentum, sending the Russian twisting end over end.

The other two maintained distance. Guns in hand, leveled on him.

" _Stand down_ ," one of them said. The woman. Her voice was flat, commanding.

They wanted him alive. He was the asset. They were not here to kill him. Of course not.

That could be an advantage, if he used it quickly.

The sickness was rising again.

He did not have long.

"Stand down," the woman said again, this time in accented English.

"No," he said, and wondered why he answered her at all. Once he wouldn't have. He shouldn't now. Something was changing.

Everything was changing.

***

Another woman, also Russian.

She was skilled. She was talented. She was more trouble than she should have been. Her tricks, he could understand. The shots from below the overpass. The voice recording. She was good at what she did.

But he shot her. The bullet passed through her. She should have been in shock. He knew, knew in ways he didn't entirely understand, how much damage his shot should have done to her, and how she should have been affected.

She had still been able to interfere, though. She had prevented him from finishing his mission when he had the chance.

There was something similar about the Russians who attacked him in the hotel.

***

He finished the first man with a snapped neck. The body fell limp from his arms. Lifeless.

He turned the woman's gun on her. Red sprayed the wall behind her. He shot again, to be sure the job was finished.

The struggle with the last of his attackers moved into the bathroom. Smashed the mirror. Cracked the tank on the toilet. Tore down the half of the shower curtain. It happened all in a moment. He finished the fight with his service knife, holding the Russian's head steady as he bled out from the neck.

Then—

And then—

***

There was blood on his face when Steve found him.

"Bucky," Steve said, and he didn't argue. The name didn't feel like him, but it felt like someone.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.

"Got nowhere else to be," Steve said.

"I don't know what's happening to me."

A pause. The answer, when it came, only repeated that silence that came before. "I do."

Steve stood in the door to the bathroom. The words were not urgent, but there was tension written in every line, every muscle.

"We need to get you out of here," Steve said. "It won't be long before this cops get here."

The police were the least of anyone's worries.

"Let me help you," Steve said.

"I don't think you can."

"C'mon, Bucky. I can see you in there. Let me help." Like a kid. Like someone younger, from a younger era, when sincerity wasn't so hard to come by.

He didn't feel sick anymore. Not in the same way. He felt… not healthy. Not stable. Strong. Angry. Cold.

He was still craving in a subtle way. He could feel the gnawing beginning of a hunger in him, and now he knew what it was for.

More than that, he knew it wasn't just the hunger that was growing in him. There was something else. Something more.

"I'm changing," he said.

"You're still you. I see the same guy I grew up with," Steve told him without moving closer. Smart move. "We all change, but that can't take away who we are or where we're from."

He laughed. He didn't realize he remembered how until the sound was out of him. It wasn't a powerful laugh, or a happy one, but it was genuine. It was also sad. "I don't know… everywhere I've been. I'm not—"

He swallowed.

Steve waited.

"I can't just go back to being someone else."

"I'm not asking for that."

"Then I don't know what you want."

Thumbs hooked in waistband. Body folded, turned in on itself, suggesting a much smaller frame. "I want you to know that I'm here for you, Bucky. I can help you. Let me help you. Whatever you need."

"And if what I need is time?"

"Then I'll still be here after you've had it."

It wouldn't be there, though. The sirens started then, police slow as always to respond. When they arrived at the hotel room, both he and Steve were long gone. All they had was the Russian bodies and questions.

***

A long time ago, in another life: there was a scrawny kid in the dirt, put there by three other boys. That didn't stop the kid from trying to climb back to his feet, though.

Bucky knew that kid. It took him a second to realize it through the dirt and the bloody nose, but by god, he knew him. Knew him well enough to pick a fight for him, come out with a black eye for him.

"You didn't have to do that," Steve said afterward, as though Bucky was hurt worse than he was.

"Don't be an idiot," Bucky said, and he cleaned the blood off Steve's face.

 

fin


End file.
